The name Heimskringla comes from the fact that the first words of the first saga in the compilation (Ynglinga saga) are Kringla heimsins, "the orb of the Earth".

Heimskringla consists of several sagas, often thought of as falling into three groups, giving the overall work the character of a triptych. The saga narrates the contests of the kings,

Up until the mid-19th century, historians put great trust in the factual truth of Snorri's narrative, as well as other old Norse sagas. In the early 20th century, this trust was largely

Whereas prior to Heimskringla there seems to have been a diversity of efforts to write histories of kings, Snorri's Heimskringla seems

The earliest parchment copy of the work is Kringla, now in the Reykjavík National Library, catalogued as Lbs fragm 82. It is a single vellum leaf from c. 1260, a part of the Saga of St. Olaf; the rest of the manuscript was lost to fire in 1728.

Snorri explicitly mentions a few prose sources, now mostly lost in the form that he knew them: Hryggjarstykki ('spine pieces') by Eiríkr Oddsson (covering events 1130-61), Skjǫldunga saga, an unidentified saga about Knútr inn gamli, and a text called Jarlasǫgurnar

History of translations
By the mid-16th century, the Old Norse language was unintelligible to Norwegian, Swedish or Danish